The World Wide Web provides a computer user access to information in the form of web pages. A web page is a document available on the World Wide Web (the "web"). Every web page is identified by a unique address referred to as a uniform resource locator (URL). A web browser is a software application used to locate and display web pages. One such browser is Microsoft's Internet Explorer. To locate a web page with a browser, the user must know the URL for the page. If the user does not know the URL or just wants to find information on a particular topic, the user uses a search engine.
A search engine is a utility that will search the Internet, an Intranet, a site, or a database for terms that you select. Search engines consist of multiple elements. A first element is a program that roams the area to be searched, collecting data and links to more data. These are variously known as spiders, worms, crawlers, or other colorful names. A second element is an index of the data collected to enable fast access to terms that you search for. A third element is a search interface--the form in which you enter your search terms and the software behind it that queries the index, retrieves matches, and ranks for relevance and organizes the data for follow-on searches
Most search vendors now provide a sidebar or separate section of "Related Sites" or "Try these first" that sometimes includes a text box for entering search criteria. But these boxes are easy to miss, are not highlighted, and vary widely from each other with respect to rules of searching or search user interface. Often users do not even regard these as being provided in response to the user's initial query.
Specialty searches on the Web give users many different styles of search user interface. The style of the search interface differs between specialty search engines even when the search functionality is the same underneath (e.g. in the placement of icons, graphics, edit boxes, submit buttons, etc.) This is confusing to the user and wastes time. In addition, specialty searches follow different rules of searching underneath. Some support phrase search, and some do not. Some make smart use of capitalization (e.g. "Bill Clinton" is a proper noun) and some do not. The effect is that users have to learn and adjust to many different ways of searching.
Pointcast and c/net have text boxes for entering search criteria that take the users to the site of a search provider where results are displayed using a variety of different styles of user interface. Users then have to figure out how to get back to the Pointcast or c/net site.
Search engines are an important method of locating information on the web, however, the results that they return can be unorganized and highly depend upon both the skill of the user in writing queries and upon the types of words used by web page writers, both in what they write for human consumption and what tags they use to attract search engines.
A search service is a web page that provides an underlying search engine, as well as multiple various categories of interest that contain previously found pages related to such categories. Many search services exist on the web to help with tasks rearranging from on-line shopping (such as buying a music compact disc, a book, a good wine, a car or a house) to planning a trip (such as locating airline flights and fares) to locating reference information (such as looking up the meaning of a word or locating safety data on a car.) However, these search services are often difficult to find, difficult to use and different from one another in their rules of searching and user interface.
The rules of searching and syntax used by each search engine varies. Understanding the syntax and search rules for each search engine is an important factor in how successful a users search will be. For example, search engines differ in how they handle truncation, pluralization and capitalization. A keyword of "bikes," "bicycle," "bicycles," or "bike" could all yield different results. Most engines interpret lower case as unspecified, but upper case will match only upper case, but there are exceptions. There is no standard at all for truncation, and worse yet, it is probably different in general and advanced search mode for every engine.
Understanding what each search engine does with the non-standard pluralization, truncation, etc. can be quite important in how successful your searches will be. For example, if you search for "bikes" you won't get "bicycle," "bicycles," or "bike." In this case, it would help to use a search engine that allowed "truncation," that is, one that allowed the search word "bike" to match "bikes" as well. One would then search for "bicycyle OR bike OR cycle" ("bicycle* OR bike* OR cycle*" in Alta Vista). With multiple words, some search engines may logically AND them or OR them. With phrases, typically one puts quotes around a phrase so that each word in the phrase is not searched for separately. One may also check an engine's help file before starting a search. Most engines allow you to type in a few words, and then search for occurrences of these words in their data base. Each one has their own way of deciding how to interpret such a search request, resulting in differing results depending on the search service used.
Each search service differs in their treatment and/or allowance of the following different kinds of search strategies. Typing a few relevant words into the search form. Specifying that words must be in the title of a page. What about specifying that words must be in an URL, or perhaps in a special HTML tag? Can they use all logical operators between words like AND, OR, and NOT, and if so, do you need delimiters? Most engines allow you to type in a few words, and then search for occurrences of these words in their data base. Each search service has their own way of deciding what to do about approximate spellings, plural variations, and truncation. If a user just types words into the "basic search" interface you get from the search engine's main page, you also can get different logical expressions binding the different words together. Excite! actually uses a kind of "fuzzy" logic, searching for the AND of multiple words as well as the OR of the words. Most engines have separate advanced search forms where you can be more specific, and form complex Boolean searches (every one mentioned in this article except Hotbot). Some search tools parse HTML tags, allowing you to look for things specifically as links, or as a title or URL without consideration of the text on the page.
There is a need for a web-based technology that provides easy to use search services and returns highly relevant information in a convenient, noticeable and consistent format. There is a further need for a search engine that provides easy to see access to information contained in databases that are not easily found by existing web crawlers and search engines. There is a need to provide a search mechanism which can bring a vast federation of specialty searches which are housed in databases that are either difficult or impossible to crawl through using conventional crawlers. There is a need for a search user interface that can vary depending upon the specialty search area. At the same time, there is a need to preserve basic elements on the search user interface and underlying search behavior regardless of the specialty search.